Atlanta Exposition Address Summary

For starters, by using repetition and metaphor in his speech, Booker T. Washington informs his audience concerning the importance of collaboration between the white and black races during the process of developing and growing the economic conditions of the South. For instance, in the third paragraph of the address, Washington mirrors a crucial state on the ocean. The crew of the lost ship almost lost their lives as a result of the lack of water, but later get told to drop down the bucket and get some water by a friendly ship, “And a third and fourth signal for water was answered. ‘Cast down your bucket where you are.’ The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River” (Washington 450). Also, by metaphorically referring that particular situation he portrays to the reality that

Booker T. Washington believed that blacks should not push to attain equal civil and political rights with whites. That it was best to concentrate on improving their economic skills and the quality of their character. The burden of improvement resting squarely on the shoulders of the black man. Eventually they would earn the respect and love of the white man, and civil and political rights would be accrued as a matter of course. This was a very non-threatening and popular idea with a lot of whites.

Booker T. Washington’s philosophy and actions betrayed the interests of African Americans because he was more interested on the blacks getting educated and getting the respect of the white authorities, instead of worrying on getting their political and social equality right away, which was the main interest of the African Americans. In “The Atlanta Exposition Address”, Washington said that blacks would sacrifice their civil rights and social equality for the time being, as long as whites guaranteed that they would receive industrial education and jobs because he believed that in order to fully obtain equality, the blacks should improve themselves. “It is at the bottom of

Booker T. Washington delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech to a white and black audience about the equality blacks and whites deserve. As a black speaker in the north, Washington influences and impresses many of the northern citizens with his moving speech. Washington brought with him “...evidence of racial progress in the South”. His audience contained the president and the board of directors as well as citizens.

1. What did Washington mean by “Cast down your bucket where you are”? How does he feel about African Americans performing manual labor, especially in the South? The phrase comes while Washington is explaining a situation in which a lost ship sees a means of help. He uses this phrase to encourage African Americans to accept what they are being given by the white southerners and use it to survive.

Booker T. Washing had a view of what it was to be American. In “Up From Slavery”, his address made in Atlanta, Booker T. Washington says “Cast down your bucket where you are.” In effect, he proposed that African Americans should accommodate themselves to racial segregation and political disenfranchisement in order to enjoy a greater degree of economic security. “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Booker T.

“The Atlanta Exposition Speech” by Booker T. Washington, “The Talented Tenth” but W.E.B. DuBois, and “The Negro’s Place in American Life at the Present Day” by T. Thomas Fortune were written during the end of the nineteenth century when African Americans were faced with great challenges on a range of different levels. These documents are very like one another considering they are all addressing the same issues, but I also feel like each of them are unique from one another because of the person who wrote them. Washington focuses more on an industrial education so the blacks can go to school. He has the whites to believe that it will also affect them and make things better for them at the time and that they will

Although blacks occupied most fields of employment, they were generally barred from many of the higher status positions. Those blacks who broke the social realm like

On September 18, 1895, African American leader Booker T. Washington delivered his speech which consisted of his idea for solving the “Negro problem”. In“Atlanta Exposition Address”, Booker T. Washington analyzes the idea of ending racism and discrimination through working their way up the social and economic ladder, or gaining equality naturally. He utilizes a story about a stray ship crew casting their buckets down for freshwater, and then uses that metaphor towards black people. He encourages members of his race to cast their buckets down in

Booker T. Washington was known as the premier of black activist. His theory for the African American progression or “racial uplift” was that African American’s would remain without objections and silence themselves regarding the issues of disenfranchisement and social segregation if whites supported the black progression in education, economics, and agriculture.

The Afro-American Almanac located on Professor Tygiel’s “Sites of Interest to History Majors” have a copy of Booker T. Washington’s famous “Atlanta Compromise” speech that he delivered in 1895. Neither before, nor since, has one speech had such a profound effect upon the career of a politician and the people that he sought to represent. Indeed, Washington’s primacy was assured when he in dramatic fashion promised (eye witness accounts have him thrusting his hand forward to underline this point) the south that: “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” The south, indeed America quickly embraced

Within his speech given at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, Washington shared his views on race relations and his belief that black should go to work to prove to whites that they would not be burdens to society. One of the most notable excerpts from his speech, is “in all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (Washington, 107). Some people thought that this simile alluded to an agreement with segregation and a settlement with the morals in that Jim Crow era. Likewise, the phrase “cast down your bucket where you are” was repeated many times throughout the speech. This sentence in particular could be interpreted many ways, by all races. For whites in the South, this expression acted as an offering of black

A well-known African-American spokesman and leader, Booker T. Washington, in his speech, The Atlanta Compromise, describes how the treatment and equality aren't the same for African American people as it is for white people. Washington’s purpose is to try and persuade his audience that black and white people should have the same rights and be treated equally. He adopts a passive tone in order to convey to his audience that the black community does a lot of services for white people and aren’t treated as such. Booker T. Washington effectively convinces his audience that everyone should have equal rights through diction, facts and statistics, and figurative language.

Booker T. Washington was one of the most well-known African American educators of all time. Lessons from his life recordings and novelistic writings are still being talked and learned about today. His ideas of the accommodation of the Negro people and the instillation of a good work ethic into every student are opposed, though, by some well-known critics of both past and current times. They state their cases by claiming the Negro’s should not have stayed quiet and worked their way to wear they did, they should have demanded equal treatment from the southern whites and claimed what was previously promised to them. Also, they state that Washington did not really care about equality or respect, but about a status boost in his own life. Both

Washington and DuBois both describe how African Americans are willing to work for their rights through the creation of ethos revealing their credibility for their Civil Rights arguments. Washington promotes his credibility by elucidating the willingness of African Americans to work for the equality of their race. Washington remarks, “Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded tour railroads and